Rox Does Yoga

Yoga, Wellness, and Life

Reading Yoga Journal March 27, 2012

Filed under: reflections,yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 9:00 am
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At the end of my teacher training (and beginning of my pregnancy), I started to get a little burned out on my yoga reading, so I have a pile of Yoga Journal back issues sitting around that I’ve been trying to work my way through. I recently read the December 2011 issue and was pleased to find some articles related to things I’ve been blogging about here lately, so I thought I’d share.

The first thing that really caught my attention was a short article about teaching yoga to Deaf students, since that’s a topic I’d never really thought about, but a Deaf person could walk into my yoga class anytime. There are some simple things a yoga teacher can do to make a class more accessible for a Deaf student, like making eye contact, demonstrating poses, and using touch to guide. These are easy things to do that wouldn’t disrupt my usual teaching rhythm at all but that I wouldn’t have thought of on my own, so I was grateful that this article broadened my awareness. Definitely tore that one out for future reference, and in the future I’d be really interested to learn more – the DeafYoga Foundation offers trainings and presentations on how to make simple adjustments that really help Deaf students, and I’d love to attend one.

There was an article on Chair Pose that I really appreciated, since Chair is one that I struggle with a bit (see the comments here and my write-up from last year here). They describe the alignment bit by bit – getting the top half of the body aligned correctly, then getting the lower half aligned, and then putting the two together for the full pose, which is an interesting bit of yoga dissection. I can see myself coming back to this article for reference later, since they give some good tips.

This issue of YJ also includes a moon salutation sequence as an alternate to sun salutations, which I found really interesting. I haven’t tried it yet, and it could end up being a little flowy for me, but it’s definitely something I want to try. I’ll keep you posted!

I was also really interested in the article on yoga and religion. Regular readers will recall that this is an issue I’ve done some serious thinking about here on the yoga blog. I really appreciated that YJ put together a panel to discuss this. After reading the article, I went back to the March 2012 issue that I’d read a few weeks earlier, and there were several letters from readers about this article, some of whom really liked it. One reader noted that the article might have had more depth if the panel had included some actual religious leaders (priests, nuns, rabbis), rather than just yogis, which was an interesting point. I was glad, though, that Brooke Boon, the founder of Holy Yoga, a Christian ministry group, was included on the panel. I’m really interested in the intersections of yoga with personal faith, and the article gave me some new perspectives and talking points. I wish YJ made its back issues available online.

 

Books: Happiness, by Matthieu Ricard March 15, 2012

Filed under: books,meditation,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 7:06 pm
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As a book on meditation, Mathieu Ricard’s Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill is the best of both worlds, presenting both a spiritual and a scientific perspective. Ricard left a promising career in biology and genetics to become a Buddhist monk, so he uniquely understands both perspectives and is fascinated by the scientific study of the brain and how meditation affects, on a biological level, the way we think. Happiness is at once a guide to how meditation can improve our lives and help us to become happier and a thorough description of why it works, written in language accessible to any reader.

In the first few chapters, Ricard opens the book with discussion of happiness in general: is happiness the purpose of life? What does it mean to be happy, and how do we recognize happiness when we have it? Can we actively cultivate happiness in our lives? Concluding that happiness is possible and that cultivating it is worthwhile, Ricard then considers the problem of suffering. How can we be happy when we suffer; further, how can compassionate beings be truly happy when faced with the suffering of others? Ricard tackles this question, presenting stories of those who have suffered true hardship and examining the root causes of suffering. While we cannot control the events that happen to us, we can always control our responses to those events, and here is the real key to being happy under any circumstance. Over several chapters, Ricard discusses how we can use meditation in order to overcome ego, negative thoughts, and disturbing emotions, the obstacles within ourselves that prevent us from being happy no matter what occurs.

Ricard speaks from his own and his teachers’ experience that when we can lessen the influence of the ego and negative thoughts and emotions, we feel more freedom and happiness in our lives. He then goes on to discuss happiness from the perspective of sociology, psychology, and psychiatry, citing laboratory studies of experienced meditators whose brains have been shown to function differently than ordinary people’s brains. Meditation over long periods literally changes brain chemistry, leading to great benefits in quality of life. Ricard as both a scientist and a talented writer, in these chapters and throughout the book, is able to describe a variety of scientific studies and their results in terms a layman can understand and appreciate.

In the later chapters, Ricard examines positive attributes like altruism, humility, and optimism, and describes how cultivating these attitudes can help us to be happier. He cites evidence that those who are kind, humble, and optimistic tend to be happier than those who are not. By modifying our behavior to act more altruistically in daily life, or by being aware of pessimistic thought patterns as they arise, we can begin to make progress toward increasing happiness.

In the book’s final chapters, Ricard addresses several difficult issues: appreciating versus wasting time, ethics and the dichotomy of good and evil, and how to be happy in the presence of death. Ricard’s wisdom truly shines in these chapters; his advice is inspirational, practical and uplifting. The concluding chapter rounds out the book by describing the challenges and great rewards of following a spiritual path. Ricard promises that with regular practice and dedication, we can each not only live happier lives but become kinder, wiser, and more compassionate. Developing these qualities can lead us, as it led Ricard, to a life of great meaning, freedom, and joy.

 

Vegetarianism in the News March 9, 2012

Filed under: yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:02 pm
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Today just a couple of quick links about vegetarianism and meat. The title of the second article, for me, pretty much succinctly answers the question posed in the title of the first article.

We’re eating less meat. Why?

70 Percent of Ground Beef at Supermarkets Contains ‘Pink Slime’

The two articles don’t actually have anything to do with each other – the NYT opinion piece on eating less meat is from January, and I just saw the pink slime news item today. As Bittman states, we’re eating less meat because meat’s expensive and because we want to be healthier. But man oh man, was I glad to be eating healthier already when I read about that pink slime.

 

Yoga and Sex Scandals March 2, 2012

Filed under: reflections,yoga,yoga lifestyle,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 1:30 pm
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Did anyone see this recent New York Times article about yoga and sex scandals? On one hand, it’s interesting to see collected in one place a listing of yogis who’ve been involved with such scandals – I’d heard about Swami Rama, but not Satchidananda, and I hadn’t heard about John Friend yet. (I guess I was more interested in reading their works on yoga and spirituality than in what they might have done behind closed doors – which is the perspective that I think most educated yogis will have – although I cannot imagine being part of a close-knit spiritual community when such a horrid act is suspected of someone so admired and trusted.)

On the other hand, sexual scandals can occur when any individual is put up on a pedestal. Tiger Woods, anyone? Too much power can go to anyone’s head. Of course such a thing is only compounded when it occurs in a spiritual community. I’ve read about Tibetan monks who let themselves get out of hand, even giving up their vows to get married, and typically we think of them as above that sort of thing. There are also countless stories of Christian preachers who took advantage where none should have been taken, and we won’t even discuss Catholic priests. William J. Broad, the NYT author, makes sex scandal out to be something unique to yoga, and in no way is that true.

Broad also suggests that, in addition to sex scandal being a yoga thing, it’s due to yoga’s roots in tantric theology. He really manages to dumb down (or sex up) tantra and the theories behind it. Having written an entire book about yoga, one would assume that Broad has read the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and hopefully the Bhagavad Gita, which are the books that I was taught are the foundation of yoga. I’ve read them too, and read two different translations of each, and I found no kinky sex stuff. And believe me, if there is kinky sex stuff to be found, I’m somebody who will notice it (see my review of Moola Bandha: The Master Key, a review which I know I wrote but somehow seems to have been infiltrated by a 13-year-old boy there at the end). There ain’t no kinky stuff in the Yoga Sutras, so I must make one of the following conclusions: (1) Broad is mistaken that tantra is the founding system that produced yoga, and yoga arose out of just plain ol’ Hinduism, or (2) tantra is a much wider system, encompassing much more than the sex Broad so readily brings up. Either way, he’s doing his readers, and the NYT readers, a disservice.

On a related subject, wait a sec, wasn’t William J. Broad the same guy who wrote the inflammatory article “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body“? Why is the New York Times accepting multiple articles from this biased author? Because controversy sells, I guess? (And apparently because he’s won some Pulitzers? 🙂 ) It’s not selling to me, I can tell you that; I won’t be buying Broad’s book and one would think I’d be in his target audience. I heard an interview with him on NPR not long ago and was struck by how different he seemed “in person” over the radio than he did in the body-wrecking article; he talked candidly and thoughtfully about how an injury made him rethink and restructure his yoga practice, but these articles make him seem like an anti-yoga crusader. That sucks because based on the NPR interview I have the feeling I’d have some good conversations with Broad in person (I tuned in mid-way through and was frankly surprised at the end when they announced his name – “Wait, that‘s the yoga-will-wreck-your-body guy?!”), but if these articles are examples of the sort of writing in his book, I feel offended and will never read it. Here’s a summary of the NPR interview and a link to listen to it – I’m struck by how different Broad’s tone is in these quotations compared with his own writing in the NYT. Anyway, if Broad’s a science writer, why is he writing articles about yoga and sex scandal anyway? Writing one book about yoga and science doesn’t make one an expert in all aspects of yoga, especially not in yoga spirituality. If you’re looking for a semi-to-non-expert, you might as well hire me, New York Times. (Psst, I’m available.)

Here’s another response to the sex scandal article (the punctuation and grammar are less than stellar, but the writer is clearly coming from a passionate interest in yoga and spirituality, and I happen to think (although it hurts me to do so) that the finer nuances of apostrophes are not an essential component of a yoga education). Anyway, just another set of thoughts from someone who appears to know a little more about tantra than I do. (Believe me, I’ve got some tantra books on my reading list for this year!)

 

Misc updates February 27, 2012

Filed under: yoga,yoga lifestyle,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 1:07 pm
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I taught my first prenatal class at EEY yesterday. It was awesome (or, at least, it seemed so to me – I hope my five students also enjoyed it!). I focused primarily on standing postures and included plenty of squatting poses as well; I’ll try to post the full sequence later this week. I felt confident teaching and the class seemed to flow really smoothly. Next time I want to walk around more, and also encourage the students to use a blanket as a prop or cushion (since personally I am far more comfortable these days sitting on a blanket/cushion than I am on a hard floor, and this class is based pretty much entirely on my own experience). I definitely need to do more research, watch a few more videos, maybe get a book, and hit another few prenatal classes myself, but I’m really happy with this beginning. And today my arms, hips, and thighs feel sore, which is a good sign. I hope my students aren’t suffering too much soreness, especially since some of them are still dealing with morning sickness!

When I thought about it, I was surprised to note that this is the first time in a while that I’ve taught yoga to students I don’t personally know in some way. It’s also the first time I’ve taught at EEY since graduating from teacher training. I was nervous, but not overly so, and I don’t think I seemed nervous; once I started teaching, I felt confident and like I had something valuable to share. This was a great feeling, and reminded me of how much I love teaching yoga! The Sunday morning timeslot for this class isn’t ideal, but I’m so glad I made room for it in my schedule and my life.

Unrelated to how awesome teaching yoga is (or perhaps tangentially related!), I just read this article by Mike Lux titled “What Bible is Santorum Reading?” This is not a political blog, but just last month I blogged about how frustrating I find it that many people who claim to be Christian do not seem to support the values that Jesus describes over and over again in the Bible. Mr. Lux makes a much better case, citing the specific number of times that Jesus told his followers to do things like help the poor, and providing examples from the Old Testament as well. I really appreciated his article so I wanted to share.

 

2012 goal update February 22, 2012

Filed under: checking in,reflections,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:03 pm
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Back in January, I did some thinking about my plans and expectations for the coming year. I thought it might be useful to check in and see how I’m doing with all the various goals I came up with.

  • Get registered with Yoga Alliance.(Check!)
  • After registering, look into yoga teacher insurance. (Still need to do this.)
  • Turn this blog into an official website with a schedule and more information about me.(I feel good on this one – if you look around and think I’m missing anything, let me know!)
  • Start a Facebook page for RoxDoesYoga separate from my personal FB to make it easier for yoga friends and potential students to find me. (Done!)
  • Keep up my ties with EEY, the yoga center where I completed my training, by attending hatha yoga class there at least once per month. (January and February: check.)
  • I also hope to attend any special events or workshops that come up at EEY, and teach as a sub there as opportunities arise. (See below…)
  • Reach out to new studios and make connections with other local yoga teachers by attending at least one new yoga class per month. I’d love to start building a new yoga community a little closer to home than EEY and look into teaching opportunities with other yoga centers. (This is such a hard one. I’ve gotten it done for January and February, hitting classes at Enso and Awaken respectively, but I’m not sure how much more reaching out I’ll be able to do. The teaching opportunities have been fast and furious, however.)
  • Keep teaching my weekly Front Porch Yoga class for private students at my home, at least for the next few months. This class will continue to be free, since these students are my friends and their interest in yoga and continued dedication to showing up at my house has provided me with invaluable teaching experience. For now, I really want to stay in practice as a teacher and not lose my confidence, and continuing the free Front Porch class will help me do that.(Front Porch Yoga is now canceled so I can focus on my yoga teaching in other venues.)
  • Begin exploring other yoga teaching opportunities. This is a little more vague, since I’m not sure what’s out there. Some ideas include teaching a discounted class for my neighbors at our town community center, or seeing if the dance studio in the next town over might be interested in starting a yoga program. (I think this resolution will need to be postponed to much later this year, if at all – there’s only so much teaching I can do with a day job!)
  • Continue to challenge myself with reading books on yoga and meditation, with a goal of one yoga-related book per month. (I didn’t succeed with this, although I managed to read the current issue of Yoga Journal and I’m almost done a meditation book. This isn’t turning out to be a good time in my life for reading.)
  • Contact Yoga Journal and other related magazines to look into writing book reviews for publication. (Still need to do this.)
  • Maintain my personal yoga practice. My goal is to fit in some sort of practice every day, whether it’s an hour-long class or three sun salutations. I want to work on practicing pranayama and meditation daily. (This is probably the hardest goal on this list. I am really, truly trying. Sometimes I’m too tired, and sometimes I just forget.)
  • Continue this blog by posting 2-3 times per week. I figure all the goals and plans I’ve listed here will give me plenty to write about! (I missed the end of January/beginning of February due to travel, but otherwise I’ve kept up with the 2-3 times per week goal.)
  • Look into and begin researching prenatal yoga.

That last one is taking off a bit, not entirely through my own initiative. It turns out that the person who has been teaching the prenatal yoga class at EEY has moved to Florida; N needed someone to fill in, and of course she thought of her pregnant former student! I’ll be picking up the 10:30 am Sunday morning prenatal class until at least the end of March and possibly for the foreseeable future.

Although I don’t have any formal training in prenatal yoga, I do have some solid experience considering that all the yoga I do right now is prenatal, and I have firsthand knowledge of how pregnant bodies feel and move. I feel pretty solid about teaching this class, mostly because my body has been very up-front and communicative about what I should and shouldn’t be doing in my yoga practice. (My digestive system needs more work on communication, but my muscles and ligaments are quite chatty.) I’m going to continue to research prenatal yoga as best I can, which right now involves watching videos online and will hopefully involve me picking up and reading a few books. I’m looking forward to learning more as I work with my students and continue on my yoga teaching journey.

 

Hips Square to the Ocean February 7, 2012

Filed under: Miscellaneous,reflections,yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:31 pm
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Beach Sun SalutationPros and Cons of Practicing Yoga on the Beach

Cons:

  1. Sand gets everywhere.
  2. Passerby feel welcome to chat with you about your yoga, which can be distracting and annoying.
  3. Sand shifts under your mat as you move. After your warrior sequence, the patch of firm even sand you picked out won’t be nearly as comfortable to sit on.
  4. If the beach is breezy, you’ll have to weigh down the corners of your mat if you don’t want to spend half your practice fixing it when it blows over.
  5. You don’t need to apply sunscreen before yoga class in a studio.
  6. Sand really gets everywhere!
  7. It’s easy to get distracted by all the birds, people, shells, boats, and other items you see at the beach.

Pros:

  1. Practicing yoga outdoors can be a welcome change to enhance your practice.
  2. Your beach yoga practice can be a conversation starter with people you might otherwise never have talked to.
  3. Shifting sand underfoot can actually help to stabilize you in postures where you tend to wobble – for example, you can wiggle your feet more deeply into the sand for extra support during balance poses.
  4. The ocean breeze can refresh you and cool you off as you practice. Weighing down your mat with shells adds an element of beauty to your plain ol’ mat, and finding the shells can be a fun preparation for practice.
  5. Once you’re sunscreened up properly, sun salutations to the actual sun add meaning to your yoga practice and remind us of where this sequence of movements came from in the first place.
  6. On the beach you have plenty of room to spread out so you won’t be touching (or bumping, or smelling) your yoga partners like you might in a studio class.
  7. Although the beach brings a whole set of distractions, it can also bring new vitality to your practice. The sounds of the birds and the waves can center us and bring us back to our true selves.

(We had a wonderful vacation! Now back to your regularly scheduled blog posts, with more beach yoga photos to follow.)

 

Spreading some love January 17, 2012

Filed under: reflections,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 2:01 pm
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Not long ago, I read this blog post: I’m Christian, Unless You’re Gay. It’s a little long, but the heartfelt emotion behind it makes it well worth reading. I really appreciated Dan’s honesty and boldness, and my heart goes out to his friend Jacob and some of the people who responded to Dan’s post.

For me here on the yoga blog, Dan’s post meant a lot to me, because it fits right in with what I’ve been talking about regarding yoga and Christianity. (Yes, it does, just hang on a sec.) There are a lot of people who are all too ready to judge. One of the people who responded to Dan’s post explained that mindset: that she felt called by her faith to judge others harshly for their sins as a form of tough love. I’m sure you’re unsurprised that I agree with Dan on this one. Many people are all too ready to judge, all too ready to cast the first stone, forgetting that Jesus said “love thy neighbor” and “judge not, lest ye be judged” (emphasis mine). We all make mistakes, and we all do things wrong sometimes. If we judge other people harshly, then we’re likely to be judged harshly too. Yoga philosophy teaches compassion, just like Jesus did.

So often people who call themselves Christians spend most of their time talking about how Jesus died to save them from sin, and not enough time talking about all the smart things Jesus said and told us to do. People get so caught up in the story of his death that they don’t think enough about his life! And when I think about examples to follow, I don’t know that I can think of a better example of how to live than Jesus. He was kind to everybody! He loved children, he had a lot of friends, he made sure everybody had plenty to eat and drink and he threw a good party. He was sensitive to the pain and grief of other people and tried to help them. He worked to heal sick people and befriend lonely people and feed hungry people. He didn’t care what people looked like on the outside; he cared about who you were inside and whether you were good and honest and kind. He didn’t blame other people for the things that happened to him. He put his faith in something beyond himself. There are probably many more things that can be said about what an exemplary guy Jesus was. And the people who talk about gays (or whoever) going to hell have read the books about Jesus, haven’t they? Haven’t they read these stories about his life? I don’t understand how someone can read those stories and claim to be a follower of Jesus and still fill his heart and mouth with hate. Jesus was not about hating.

My point is, Jesus was all about compassion, and so is yoga. There’s nothing in what the yoga philosophies tell you to do that contradicts anything Jesus tells you to do. Not on a practical “here’s how to live your life as a good person” kind of way. I’m a yogini and maybe a Buddhist too, and I try to be true to the things that my special books tell me to do. I think that if you’re a Christian, you should try to live according to the things Jesus said to do. And Jesus didn’t say “punish sinners” or “don’t do yoga”, and I’m pretty sure he never said anything about whom you go to bed with. Jesus said to love everybody. I think that’s a pretty fine foundation to use to build a way to live.

 

First Prenatal Yoga Class January 16, 2012

Filed under: yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 11:25 am
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Yesterday I went to my first prenatal yoga class: the Sunday 10:30 class at EEY. Unfortunately, the regular teacher was really sick, so there was a sub. Maureen did a decent job teaching the class, I thought, especially considering that she was kind of on the spot and was picking it up last minute. Since this was my first prenatal yoga class, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it seemed to me that she taught the class more like a “gentle yoga” than a “prenatal yoga”. All the ladies in the room seemed to be in the 3-6 month range, and able to handle a more vigorous class than she gave us. Maureen definitely understood using prenatal yoga to improve emotional balance and calm in the face of all these bodily changes, but for me another important aspect of prenatal yoga is strengthening my body to stay healthy and prepare for the birth. It was still a good yoga class, and I’m glad I attended (and man were my hips and tush sore today!), but I want to go back and try the class again with the regular teacher.

I’ve been looking around for other prenatal yoga classes in my area, and here’s what I’ve found:

What’s with these schedules? I understand that the Creative Living Room, at least, offers a whole lot of stuff other than yoga, so I’m honestly just glad they’re offering prenatal at all, but I’m pregnant, not unemployed. (However, they also offer a post-natal mom-and-baby class, which I really hope to attend as soon as the baby is mobile and I’m back on my feet.) For the studios with Sunday morning classes, I understand that prenatal yoga has a limited audience and a studio might not want to spend their prime evening hours on a class that won’t bring in a ton of people. But I do like to sleep in on Sundays, since it’s one of the few days I have when I can do that, and sleep is pretty important right now. I’m also trying to go to church more often, which is pretty much completely incompatible with a Sunday morning yoga class. I feel a lot more motivated to go to church now that I’m pregnant, because we have a church we like with a good religious education program for my future kid; there are lots of other families with small kids at our church who could be good friends/resources for us; and getting involved now would probably make it easier to stay involved and keep attending once the baby arrives. So that makes Sunday mornings really inconvenient for yoga. It’s just possible I could hit the 9:15 service at my church and then rush out the door to get to a yoga class, but that kind of defeats the purpose of going to church. I’d rather have a class on Sunday at 2pm, honestly: church, lunch, then yoga sounds like a great day.

I did find a few other options that are less ideal:

  • The Yoga Garden in Narberth, PA offers prenatal yoga on Tuesdays at 6pm and Saturdays at 9:30am. However, it’s a good half-hour away, on a road busy enough to easily increase the travel time. It looks like the studio is close to the train station, so for the Tuesday class I could take the train there after work, but then poor F would have to drive out to pick me up after class, and that would eat up an hour of his evening just in the car. Saturday mornings could possibly work, though, so I’ll keep this in mind.
  • Belly Pilates in Bryn Mawr, PA seems to be specifically for expecting and new mothers, which sounds great. However, I don’t do pilates now because it’s prohibitively expensive (I’ll spend $15 or, tops, $17 on one activity class, but not $25, sorry.) They do offer some yoga classes, but they’re priced almost as high as the pilates. The prenatal yoga is Tuesdays at 9:30am, and again, not unemployed. The postpartum yoga is Tuesdays at 1:30pm, which I could possibly do on my maternity leave, but the same teacher does the Creative Living Room post-natal classes, and TCLR is less than ten minutes from my house and much more affordable, so not sure why I’d hike all the way to Bryn Mawr. So Belly Pilates is off the list for now. (Plus I hate to say it but their website is ugly and difficult to navigate, and that turns me off big time.)

That leaves Thursday nights at Enso as my best option for a regular prenatal yoga class, so I’m going to try to check that out this week or next week. I’ll keep you posted!

 

Avoiding Injuries Through Mindfulness January 12, 2012

Filed under: reflections,yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:58 pm
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A lot of people have read the recent NYT article about how yoga will “wreck your body”. As a brand-new yoga teacher, I obviously disagree with a lot of what the writer says: I mean, I just spent a significant amount of time and money dedicating myself to learning about yoga, which would be kind of a waste if this guy is right. Here are my thoughts.

Of course many people have injured themselves doing yoga. It’s not difficult to do – I’ve done it myself, and so has almost anyone who’s practiced yoga with any dedication over an extended period of time. You can injure yourself hiking or dancing or playing video games or gardening, too, but that doesn’t mean that we stop hiking and dancing and gardening. These are things that feed our spirits, and so is yoga. To single out yoga as an activity that can wreck your body doesn’t make sense, because there are so many other activities that can wreck your body! We humans are equal opportunity wreckers. Accidents can happen no matter what you’re doing.

The key thing, for me, is to keep in mind what the true purpose of yoga is. According to the ancient texts, yoga is a way to get the body healthy so you can then sit in meditation. The point is not to sculpt the body or lose weight or to get a great workout, and people who approach yoga with that attitude (or, with that attitude only) may in the long run be more likely to injure themselves. The point is to be healthy: whatever healthy happens to be for your particular body. And the point of being healthy ultimately isn’t the body at all – we’re working on the body so that we can sit comfortably in meditation. A healthy body won’t be aching and complaining when you sit still for ten minutes. That’s the point we’re trying to get to: improving the body so we can focus on more important things.

Keeping your focus off the body and on the mind can actually help yoga practitioners not to injure themselves. You want to be aware of what’s going on in the body, certainly, and it’s really important to cultivate that awareness of how the body feels and the difference between work and pain. Being mindful of your body is crucial, but it doesn’t do any good to be looking in the mirror or comparing yourself to other students and forcing your body toward something you’re not capable of. And don’t think ahead to what this yoga class is doing for you; keep your mind right in the moment, on your own mat. Stay present and focused on the pose you’re doing right now.

When you take part in any activity, you do your best to be careful and to be mindful of what you’re doing. When you go hiking or ride your bike, you watch where you’re going, but if your mind wanders, your foot can slip or your bike can veer off the path. It’s the same thing in yoga. Staying present and mindful and focused on what you’re doing will help you to avoid inadvertently causing an injury.

Here are a few other responses to the article by nvnehi and anytimeyoga and Michael Taylor. I think it’s interesting to see the very different, thoughtful ways that different yogis have reacted.